THIS IS THE OCCUPATION

In case you wondered what causes young men to turn themselves into human bombs (from the BBC):

As the houses thin out, something strange becomes apparent. Small signs of destruction, demolished walls, uprooted trees - the devastation increasing until all the houses we pass are all derelict.

"We are approaching Netzarim," says the driver, whose name I discover is Ahmed.

After a certain point, every feature of landscape has been erased - bulldozed out of existence by the Israeli army.

The only building visible for hundreds of metres is the fortified watchtower guarding the western side of the settlement. Behind in the hazy distance is the lush setting of Netzarim itself.

This is the reality of the occupation: family homes bulldozed and thousands made homeless, ancestral farmland which fed those thousands uprooted and expropriated, all to create a "security perimeter" for an Israeli settlement which is illegal in the first place. Now imagine this happening throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip for the last thirty years, and you'll understand why it's preposterous for Israel to demand that Palestinian terrorism abate while the occupation continues.

Or, conversely, why Israel's demand effectively ensures that the occupation will never end, and thus settlements may continue to expand.

The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem recently released a report on Israel's practice of demolishing the homes of suspected militants (and their families and neighbors). Read it if you can stomach it.